


to break and to be destroyed

by barmaid



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Friends With Benefits, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24534796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barmaid/pseuds/barmaid
Summary: Chikage has spent the past twenty-seven years haunting lecture halls and libraries like the yearning ghost of a twelfth century poet, reciting monologues and tracing foreign alphabets on his tongue and hoping to find meaning in their margins.(Chikage has decided that if there’s something there, it’s not in any script he recognizes.)How to be brought back to Earth.
Relationships: Chigasaki Itaru/Utsuki Chikage
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	to break and to be destroyed

**Author's Note:**

> something like venting & experimenting. i dont know when this takes place in canon timeline.
> 
> warnings for gratuitous religious metaphor and possible allusions to dissociation/self harm (both veeeery very vague). chikage is not religious

(What you don’t know can’t hurt you.)

-

Chikage knows that he can hold his breath for eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds before he needs to breathe. He knows that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, that twenty different languages aren’t always enough to seduce a target, and that when fate finally catches up to him, God himself will be the one to drag him headfirst into the underground. He knows how many circles he has to trace into his thumb before he comes back down to Earth on a bad day, (Fifty,) and how many different times Itaru will try to push his buttons on a good day. (Also fifty.)

Chikage has spent the past twenty-seven years haunting lecture halls and libraries like the yearning ghost of a twelfth century poet, reciting monologues and tracing foreign alphabets on his tongue and hoping to find meaning in their margins. 

(Chikage has decided that if there’s something there, it’s not in any script he recognizes.)

-

Chikage knows that it’s Friday night. That after work Itaru will be leading them a few blocks down to the same curry stall they end up at every other week, with the cheery attendant and the broken chair that’s haphazardly leaning against worn concrete. This stall doesn’t seem to have any meaning hidden in between the stools or wedged behind a trash can. Chikage wishes it did.

(He is unsure why he finds himself looking at Itaru with such reverence. He wonders if Itaru would offer him meaning from every fissure in his body if Chikage were to crack him open.)

(Chikage is destined to break, afterall. He wonders if Itaru would let him.)

-

Chikage is destined to turn things to ash in the same way Midas is cursed with a golden touch. He wonders which god decided he was being too greedy when he barely even knows what it means to want. He doesn’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse or somewhere inbetween and he does not know which of these things he’d want it to be. His hand skims the handle of the bathroom door. It does not turn to ash.

There is no meaning hidden in the grates of his shower drain. Chikage wonders if his body will give it up and tell him where he’s supposed to be if he scrubs hard enough. The dead skin that swirls around his feet does not seem to give him any hints, and his skin is rubbed raw where his nails dig holes into his thighs. The crescents left in their wake seem to mock him. The devil in his head laughs along.

-

Chikage is not a god but sometimes he acts like he is. He does not know what that says about him. A part of him does not really care.

-

If Chikage were a god he would not feel emotions like love or lust. He’s already halfway there.

-

Chikage is not a god.

-

Chikage is not a god but sometimes he acts like he is. He knows how he is perceived. He prides himself on it, if anything.

Meaning is worthless when you are divine and Chikage wears divinity like he’s trying to show it off. He knows what this says about him. Part of him does not really care.

-

(The other part of him wants to blame Itaru for getting a god on his knees. Chikage wonders what he would look like, if Itaru were to crack him open. Because the divinity does not seem to leave him when he’s naked but he wants to be bare.)

-

Chikage has always been destined to break, but sometimes he _wants_ to be broken. He wants to be taken apart and put back together again until something clicks; until he’s downgraded from a devil to a god to a human like some sort of fucked up puzzle that aches to be solved. He’s missing a piece. He doesn’t know where it went or where it goes.

(He probably threw it away on purpose.)

-

Itaru does not know his times tables past twelve or how many miles it would take to scale the globe. He knows that it takes twelve steps to reach the fridge from the couch and he knows that Chikage is not a god. 

-

Chikage does not know what it means to love in the same way that August’s shitty romcoms play out. There is nothing inherently romantic about skin on skin and fingers in hair and downturned gazes in low lit rooms. He’s breaking. He wants. He doesn’t know what that means either.

-

(Chikage has never been good at playing dumb.)


End file.
